Tobias Woods

Ever since Tobias started using them he has had pretty good fine motor skills for his age (as far as I can tell... based on what I see in his peers...). He can be so incredibly gentle when he picks something up or when he tries to put something away or when he pets our cats or anything else basically. It is adorable to see him use his little fingers and hands to do stuff.

Also his hand-eye coordination seems to be quite OK. We have this fishing game he got as a gift for his second birthday. We has a feeling it would be tough for him to pick up the fish using his fishing rod, but he has been able to do it just fine picking up exactly the fish he says he will pick up or we ask him to pick up.

Because we moved we got a good look at all the stuff we have. One of the things we found is a toy golf set that I got as a bachelor party joke... Well, now it is being used pretty much every day by Tobias... And again Tobias shows his excellent hand-eye coordination because he can hit those balls pretty darn good... He can hit a long drive all the way across the living room, but when I tell him to hit it gently so that it will go in the hole he can do that as well. Ok, it does not usually go in the hole, since that is virtually impossible, but it does reach and "hit" the hole.

Anyway, I am impressed.... (yes, and biased too :-)). 

Boxes and Cookies

When you talk about moving and small children are involved you always hear these stories of how traumatized kids can be when they move. I don't know if it is because Tobias is too young for that, or if we did something right, or because he is just a layed back kid, but Tobias seems to really like our new house and his new room and everthing.

What we did is involve him every step of the way (except the day we moved all our stuff). We involved him in decorating his room, putting his furniture back together, hanging his curtains, unpacking boxes, everything. And he enjoyed everything. He was lugging his toy-tools around and "helping" us with everything we did. He also helped vacuuming and cleaning and stuff like that. Anyway, from day one he has talked about "Tobias' new room" and loved it. He has not been waking up or screeming or any of the other things you hear about small children moving.... So, we are happy about that.

Here he is on the first day we stayed at our new place. Like I told you our stuff was already here. That day we did a lot of cleaning and rearranging so that we could actually live here... Tobias found all those boxes quite interesting although I think at this particular moment his attention was more with the cookies he is holding and eating... :-). 

Gwasses On

Like I said, many many cool things to play with... He found Oma's glasses (or gwasses) as he calls them... Of course he has seen glasses before and has had them on. He has a pair of sunglasses himself. I never took a picture of him wearing glasses (other than his own sunglasses). He looks so intelligent, doesn't he? I just thought it was a cute picture. We were just goofing off a little bit when I took this one.

Well, that's all from my parent's place for now. The next pictures will be in or around our new house (or anywhere else we take interesting pictures which might even include my parent's house, just not taken during the three weeks we stayed there... :-)). 

Tobias Davis...

There are sooooo many cool things to play with at Opa's and Oma's place... Like the trumpet. Of course this is not a toy but fun to play with anyway... Of course it is quite a joke when Daddy tries to play something on it, so Tobias probably thought it better to try himself. No sound came out, but it was fun and resulted in this cute picture. I admit, I should stick to piano and guitar (and maybe some singing), but Tobias should stick to his own toy trumpet... 

Pay Me My Money Down

As I told you before we stayed at my parent's house for a while. Well, that time is over now. We are (almost) fully settled in our new house, even though some things still remain to be done. It is very nice and comfortable and we have been living her for about 3 weeks now. Recently our internet connection was hooked back up so I am now fully equipped to start blogging again.

Before I go on to pictures in the new house there are still some I would like to post from the time we were living at my parent's place. Even though it was not the nicest reason to stay there, we had a good time staying there and so did Tobias as you can see here.

I love this picture because both Tobias and I were so into the moment... My dad has the new Bruce Springsteen CD: "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions". The Boss plays Pete Seeger songs one of which is "Pay Me My Money Down" and Tobias and I love that song. This picture was taken when we were playing and singing the song really loud! Tobias is shaking his maracas and singing and smiling all at the same time. Great! We played that song a lot while staying there. I have a feeling I will associate that song with the transition from one house to another from now on... 

Staying at Oma and Opa's

We have been moving for about 3 weeks now... A few posts back I talked about us redoing our new house and everything. Well, that we did and it still is not finished, even though we had to be out of our old house two weeks ago... and we have been out of there for a little over two weeks now.

We have not yet moved into our new house... Well, our furniture has, but not us. The contractor was not finished yet and is still working on it. We now plan to move in this wednesday.

As a consequence we have not had a descent internet connection for the past couple of weeks so I have not been able to post any new photo's, much to the dismay of some of my most loyal readers... So, this morning at work I put posting a message on top of my todo list... :-).

Another consequence is that Tobias has been playing with all sorts of new stuff at my parent's house. For instance, Oma's hat... It was hanging on the coat rack when he spotted it and I couldn't resist putting it on his head. He had to laugh and was running around with it. Of course it is way to big so it would fall over his eyes as he was playing with the ball. A pretty funny sight, and, as you can see in this picture, pretty cute too, right? 

Peek-a-Boo -> Hello

Tobias has always loved playing peek-a-boo. We have been playing it for a long time. Recently the words of the game have changed though and now it is "Hello" in various pronounciations, ranging from Dutch to American, but his (and my) favorite one it probably the very overdone Queen's English.

Most of the times we play his on our armchair. He loves that game and he sometimes has to laugh so hard that it hurts...

On my daddy-days I often go into town. Behind the city hall of Gouda, which is situated on the town square, there is a sort of a balcony supported by some pillars (one of which is in this picture...). About a month ago when we were walking there I remember playing peek-a-boo with him by hiding and walking around the pillars. Last wednesday we did the same thing and as you can imaging now the game was not "Peek-a-boo", but it was "Hello", and he loved it! Here I captured him in one of the "Hello"-moments...